Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) have attracted major interest from research and development communities as an alternative source of power. In these fuel cells electricity is generated via electro-chemical reactions using hydrogen based gas and oxygen as a fuel and oxidant, respectively.

Sealing these units is a critical technical issue that needs further work before they can be put into widespread commercial use. In particular the system chosen must exhibit good gas tightness, adhesion with adjoining components (electrolyte and connector), chemical compatibility, matching coefficient of thermal expansion and electrical insulation. Ceramic seal technology recently developed may be the solution.

Even Nazca booby families don't stay together after the kids leave the nest these days. The Nazca booby is a long-lived seabird found in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador.

Many Nazca booby females switch mates after successfully raising a chick, according to a Wake Forest University study.

Buried beneath a sulfurous cauldron in European seas lies a class of microorganisms known as “extremophiles,” so named because of the extreme environmental conditions in which they live and thrive. Almost as radical, perhaps, is the idea that these organisms and their associated enzymes could somehow unlock the key to a new transportation economy based on a renewable biofuel, lignocellulosic ethanol.

Women who enjoy good childhood relationships with their fathers are more likely to select partners who resemble their dads research suggests.

In contrast, the team of psychologists from Durham University and two Polish institutions revealed that women who have negative or less positive relationships were not attracted to men who looked like their male parents.

Using a robotic telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory, astronomers have for the first time measured the velocity of the explosions known as gamma-ray bursts. The material is travelling at the extraordinary speed of more than 99.999% of the velocity of light, the maximum speed limit in the Universe.

"With the development of fast-slewing ground-based telescopes such as the 0.6-m REM telescope at ESO La Silla, we can now study in great detail the very first moments following these cosmic catastrophes," says Emilio Molinari, leader of the team that made the discovery.

Quantum entanglement is one of the many non-intuitive features of quantum mechanics. If two photons of light are allowed to properly interact with one another, they can become entangled. One can even directly create pairs of entangled photons using a non-linear process called SPDC (Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion).

Those two entangled photons can then be separated but as soon as one of them interacts with a third particle, the other photon of the pair will change its quantum state instantaneously.